I once met war correspondent Sebastian Junger. He appeared just one step removed from battle -- rumpled, stubbled, sweaty and wild-eyed. He seemed nearly feral.

Plume, 379 pp.; $17

That image came back as I read Michael Hastings' The Operators, a profane, manic, messy, bloody and deeply cynical account of General Stanley McChrystal's year (2009-2010) as commander of the war in Afghanistan.

Hastings wrote the 2010 Rolling Stone article about McChrystal and his staff boozing it up and openly bashing the Obama administration. It led to the general's resignation. Here Hastings inspects the underbelly of the war and points out how frequently the press has swallowed the U.S. military's spin:

"The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world has ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood."

This polemic pairs nicely with Thomas E. Rick's more encyclopedic, but still pointed, new book, "The Generals."

For five other noteworthy new paperbacks:

Princess Elizabeth's Spy

Susan Elia MacNeal (Bantam, 345 pp.)$15

MacNeal's follow-up to "Mr. Churchill's Secretary" again casts whip-smart American ex-pat Maggie Hope in the starring role of a whodunit set in World War II-era Britain. Maggie, former secretary to the prime minister, trains to become a spy for MI-5, hopeful that she'll be assigned an exciting post on the Continent. Instead, she's given the disappointing task of tutoring 14-year-old Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle.

But Maggie soon discovers that castle life holds much intrigue and danger. Murder and conspiracy threaten Maggie -- and the royal family.

The critic at Publishers Weekly described the mystery as enjoyable: "After the initial, somewhat slow scene-setting chapters, which depict scheming Nazis as well as the dubious loyalty of the duke and duchess of Windsor, the plot picks up momentum with false starts, double agents, and red herrings."

The Limit

Michael Cannell (Twelve)

$14.99

Subtitled "Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit," Cannell's nonstop narrative follows racer Phil Hill, a California mechanic who became the first American to win the Grand Prix Championship. Racing for the Ferrari team, he competed, at high speeds and without benefit of seat belts or roll bars, with the likes of rival German Count Wolfgang von Trips, nicknamed Count von Crash. Dozens of drivers went down in flames, and the races were so dangerous that the Vatican denounced them.

Writing in The Boston Globe, critic John Wilwol called this book exhilarating, writing, "Its pages are filled with tales of nationalistic ardor, devil-may-care bravura, and gallows humor. And there are wrecks. Grisly, spectacular, pyrotechnic wrecks."

In its starred review, Publishers Weekly's reviewer reported, "The author revs the narrative with greasy atmospherics and colorful figures like the Bond villain-ish motor mogul Enzo Ferrari --'What a pity. What about the car?' was his eulogy for a dead driver."

The Corn Maiden

Joyce Carol Oates (Mysterious Press, 365 pp.)

$15

Oates is at her creepy best in this collection of seven stories that evince horror from the ordinary. In the title novella, 11-year-old silken-haired Marissa goes missing. Though evidence points to a teacher at her school, the terrifying truth is that she's been kidnapped by three girls who have planned a human sacrifice based on the Native American legend of the Corn Maiden.

In "Helping Hands," a lonely woman becomes obsessed with a man she meets at a charity resale shop. As her attraction turns to desire, she moves ever closer to a terrifying revelation. In the stomach-churning "A Hole in the Head," a cosmetic surgeon agrees to perform an unorthodox procedure with shocking results.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune's critic called the collection compelling, while the starred review in Publishers Weekly noted that the book "may prompt the reader to turn on all the lights or jump at imagined noises."

Seven Houses in France

Bernardo Atxaga (Graywolf, 250 pp.)

$15

Basque writer Atxaga set this dark novel in the Belgian Congo during the early 20th century. Captain Lalande Biran commands a garrison in Yangambi, a remote posting on the Congo River. Though he'd rather be a poet, he oversees slaves toiling in mahogany and rubber production. Every Thursday, he sends one of his officers, Donatien, into the jungle to bring back a virgin for his entertainment -- he's terrified of syphilis -- while his wife, Christine, waits for him back in Paris.

Christine is willing to wait: If Biran remains in Africa, producing more mahogany and rubber, she will be able to grasp the seventh house she covets in prestigious St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. As reviewer Miranda France wrote in The Guardian, "Everyone will end up paying for Christine's seventh house: the Congolese with their labour, the girls with their virginity, the officers with their sanity."

The uneasy rhythm of the garrison is further disturbed with the arrival of a new officer, Chrysostome Li ge, an expert marksman but suspiciously effeminate. The balance of power begins to shift, and violence explodes.

Critic France wrote that Atxaga's writing is "as irresistible as Garc a M rquez, as forceful as Vargas Llosa," and that "Atxaga's story is fresh, his treatment of violence psychologically rich."

Across Many Mountains

Yangzom Brauen (St. Martin's Griffin, 286 pp.)

$15.99

Three generations of Tibetan women form the nucleus of this eventful memoir. Brauen begins her story nearly 100 years ago when her grandmother, Kunsang, was one of Tibet's youngest nuns. She fell in love with a young monk, Tsering, and the two married and had two children. (The branch of Tibetan Buddhism the two followed is tolerant, if not encouraging, of marriage between a nun and a monk.)

When the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959, the young family decided to follow their spiritual leader to India in a harrowing trek over the Himalayas. Kunsang carried her younger daughter on her back. Six-year-old Sonam, the author's mother, walked, though nearly died when she fell into a crevasse unbeknownst to her parents. She clawed her way out.

A harsh welcome awaited the refugees in India, where they were forced into hard labor constructing roads, living under a tarp. Both Sonam's younger sister and her father died. Then Martin Brauen, a young Swiss man studying Buddhism, fell in love with Sonam and took her and her mother back to Switzerland, where the author was born.

Yangzom Brauen is an actress, model and activist on behalf of Tibetan causes. While her writing can be stilted, her dramatic story is moving. It sheds light on the plight of Tibetans caught in a decades-long struggle to survive as a culture.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama endorsed the book, saying that it "paints a vivid picture of Tibetan experience over the last eight decades, one of the most difficult periods in our history. Through the personal stories of three women from one Tibetan family, it recalls the imposition of Chinese rule in Tibet and the subsequent efforts of many Tibetans to preserve their identity and treasured values in exile."

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